[WikiEN-l] Peodophiles and wikipedia

[Bryan Derksen]

From: Ken Arromdee <arromdee at rahul.net>
> On Tue, 25 Dec 2007, Bryan Derksen wrote:
> > On a related note, I really don't understand the notion that 
> some people have that any article written by a banned editor 
> while he's banned must be deleted regardless of whether it's a 
> valid article or not. That's another instance of putting the 
> goal of "punishment" ahead of "encyclopedia writing".
> 
> Because nobody is supposed to commit abuse.  If you allow 
> banned users to edit as long as they don't commit abuse, that's equivalent to 
> allowing banned users to edit, period.  In other words, unless valid 
> articles from banned editors are deleted, there is no such thing as a ban at all.

But my point is that the goal of "maintaining a ban on a user" is _not_ more important than the goal of "writing the damned encyclopedia." If maintaining a ban on someone requires deleting perfectly good encyclopedic content that has nothing wrong with it otherwise, well, screw the ban. You're not advancing the state of Wikipedia and of free content in general by getting rid of such stuff.

If they page was written by a sock puppet of a banned user (presumably, since the scenario is that he wrote the page while banned), then upon identifying it just ban the sock puppet too. "Thank you for your contribution, but back into the hole with you."

Would you also be in favor of deleting otherwise perfectly good articles that were copied from GFDLed text that a banned user had written and posted on a different website?